#2: The Visitor

I really liked this book as a kid because Rachel was my favorite character and cats are my favorite animal. So Rachel turning into a cat = AWESOME! But while we're on the subject of kitties, here's something that always bugged me: what happened to Dude? Tobias's cat is acquired first and never mentioned again, even though a cat figures prominently in a mission which takes place almost immediately after he's trapped as a hawk, never to return to his abusive, alchoholic uncle's home. You'd think he'd see Fluffer McKitty and wonder what's going to happen to Dude without him. It's not like his uncle will be any less neglectful of the cat than he was of his own human nephew. That poor cat is probably going to starve to death.

In my headcanon, Tobias asks Rachel to take care of Dude, and she takes him home as a stray that she randomly found and tells her sisters, "I think we should call him Dude," and his sisters are like, "That's a stupid name! We should call him Gavin Xavier Pettingsworth." And Tobias is like, [Seriously?] but at least he's warm and safe and that's all that really matters. Or even better: Tobias tries to get Rachel to take Dude, but her mom's allergic to animals (which would explain why a house full of little girls has no pets whatsoever), and then Marco of all people volunteers to take him, because he thinks it'll cheer his dad up. (Not that he tells Tobias that.) And it does, because animals are excellent anti-depressants, and his dad re-names the cat Schrodinger because that's something he's wanted to do since grad school, and Marco is slightly less of an asshole to Tobias after that.

But enough about Dude. We open this book on Dude's former owner, Tobias, giving the rest of the Animorphs a flying lesson. They are enjoying it very much, until a couple of drunken rednecks start randomly shooting at them. This is the first of many books that open with Captain Planet-style mini-missions where the kids foil animal abuse. It is random and kind of dumb and best forgotten. I would eventually start skimming the first few chapters of every new book, knowing that they usually consisted of recaps for noobs and silly stuff like this. Anyway, Rachel drops the guy's rifle in the ocean and Marco drops the other guy's beer can in the garbage, and they demorph in an abandoned church tower by the ocean that we never see again, but really should, because it's an awesome location. If this was set today instead of 1996, the church would probably already have been renovated by hipsters and turned into a hookah bar.

Once they're all human again, Rachel heads off to her weekly gymnastics class. It's at the YMCA, which is across the street from the mall, so it must be pretty close to the abandoned construction site where they got their powers - if not literally next door. This construction site sounds like it's in a very convenient central location. Kind of amazing that it's been left vacant all this time. Anyway, they're walking past the site (not through it, because already it contains too many sad memories), and Jake mentions that they closed the entrance to the Yeerk pool in their middle school. Rachel suggests following Tom the next time his Yeerk needs to go back down there, but...

"No. We leave Tom out of it," Jake said firmly. "If we call attention to him in any way, the Yeerks may decide he's trouble for them. They may decide to kill him."

Marco gave me a sour look. "This is what you want to keep doing? Risking our lives and the lives of everyone we know? For what?"

"For freedom," Cassie said simply.

There's the Cassie I remember! Last book, I was a bit disappointed that she seemed to be primarily motivated by turning into animals, to the point where she seemed to forget that there was an alien invasion going on. Maybe being kidnapped by Racist Yeerk Cop and almost getting infested taught her something. To bring it back around to character motivation, I mentioned in the last post that all three boys are motivated most strongly by family. Cassie's motivation, and her viewpoint in general, tends to be broader and more abstract. She doesn't need a personal stake in this fight. She's committed to abstract moral values - to the point of distraction from real things happening right in front of her. Hmmm... on the other hand, maybe her characterization in the last book was fair.

Anyway, their only lead now is Assistant Principal Chapman. Jake knows that Rachel is (or was) friends with his daughter, Melissa. He doesn't actively suggest that she use her to get to her dad, but he does strongly imply it, waiting for Rachel to fill in the blanks. Rachel is deeply uncomfortable with this idea, but understands that the fight comes first and sometimes you have to do immoral things for the greater good. The line of how far a character is willing to go ethically to fight the Yeerks will be pushed further and further throughout the series, especially by Rachel. For now, it extends only to having ulterior motives for reaching out to an old friend.

So when she gets to her gymnastics class, she tries to engage Melissa in conversation. Melissa acts all weird and stand-offish, and blows Rachel off. That's when Rachel starts to suspect that Melissa herself might be a Controller. This makes Rachel so depressed she doesn't even want to go shopping (!!!), so instead of going to the mall and calling her mom when she's ready to be picked up, she decides to walk home. "Alone. With the sky growing dark as rain clouds moved in." And here's where things get weird.

In the last book, Rachel was deeply offended by Jake's suggestion that the boys walk Rachel and Cassie home for their own protection. Now she's walking home alone and she berates herself four different times for making such a stupid decision. This might be K.A. making sure that young readers know not to imitate the characters (the first book also emphasized how dangerous it was for a kid to cut through the abandoned construction site), but it also subtly hints at things to come. Rachel will soon earn a reputation among the group for fearlessness. But when she narrates, she explains that she's just as scared as anyone else: she just puts on a brave face and does what needs to be done. Her outburst at Jake early in the last book might have been the first example of her putting on that brave face. So that's the positive part of this scene.

A car pulls up just ahead of her. An older guy steps out of the car and says, "Hey, baby. Want to go for a little ride?" Now, already we're seeing that this is way more than just simple street harrassment. The guy parked his car and stepped out of it. He is serious about raping this girl.

I shook my head and clutched my gym bag close. What an idiot I was to be so careless!

"Now, don't be stuck-up, sweet thing," he said. "I think you'd better get in the car."

The way he said it didn't sound like an invitation. It sounded like an order. Now I was really afraid.

I clutched my gym bag close as I passed him.

"Don't ignore me," he hissed.

He reached for me and missed. I walked faster.

He was behind me.

I broke into a run.

He ran after me.

"Hey. Hey, there! Come back here."

I had been stupid going out alone. But fortunately, unlike most people, I wasn't helpless.

Rachel morphs into an elephant - just a little, just enough to terrify him. And it works! He runs away screaming, jumps into his car through the window like a Duke brother, and burns rubber getting the hell out of there. Unfortunately, Rachel shredded her shoes during the morph, and it's starting to rain. Luckily, someone Rachel knows pulls up to offer her a ride - Chapman!

She refuses his offer, worried that he saw her morph, but he insists. As he's driving her home, he and Melissa ask her about the rapist. Rachel makes up a story about him dropping something by the side of the road, then running away so he wouldn't get wet in the rain. It's a very tense scene, but apparently Chapman didn't see her morph because nothing ever really comes of it.

When Rachel gets home, we see our first glimpse of her family life: her parents are divorced and her mother, a lawyer, does as much work at home as she can so she can be there for her three daughters. It strikes me that all the Animorphs (except Tobias) have really good relationships with their parents. You don't really see any door-slamming or shouts of "YOU'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND!" Even Marco doesn't irrationally hate his father for falling apart after his mom died. I was way more emotionally unstable when I was the Animorphs' age, prone to sulking and exploding at my family for no reason at all, and that was without a part-time job as Savior of Humanity. Maybe I was a particularly awful teenager, or maybe the characters are so mature because acting like actual 13-year-olds would ruin their likeability. Anyway, we find out that Rachel has two younger sisters, Jordan and Sara, and an overworked single mom who's doing the best she can.

Rachel invites the gang to her house to "listen to a new CD." She tells them most of what happened, leaving out the ride home she got from Chapman, and Marco immediately goes ballistic:

"Oh, that was dumb! Dumb! DUMB!" Marco said. "What if that guy is a Controller?"

"He wasn't a Controller," I said scornfully. "Why would the Yeerks want to make a Controller out of a punk? They want people in positions of power."

"We don't know that for sure," Jake said. "Tom isn't in a position of power."

"And how about people driving by in their cars, or looking out of the windows of their homes?" Marco asked. "And what if he runs and tells someone about this girl who suddenly sprouted a trunk and tusks?"

"No one is going to believe a lowlife like that," I said.

"His friends won't believe him," Marco said poisonously, "but a Controller would believe him. A Controller would know what it meant."

It makes me uncomfortable to watch Rachel berate herself again and again for walking home alone, and then watch her friends berate her for doing what she had to do to protect herself. The simple act of walking home should not be a dangerous thing for a teenage girl to do, and I kind of wish at least one of the characters had pointed this out. Even though she wasn't actually raped, there's a strong air of victim-blaming about these two chapters. Rachel's narration seems to imply that getting kidnapped and raped would have been her fault for walking home alone. Her friends seem to imply that she should have allowed it to happen rather than reveal her powers to someone who, realistically speaking, almost certainly wasn't a Controller.

There's also the way in which the attempted rape occurred. First of all, most rapes don't involve strange men jumping out of bushes (or cars) to attack random girls as they walk down the street minding their own business. The typical rape is more like, "My friend Marco and I were hanging out in my room, and he started jokingly flirting with me like he does, and I was joke-flirting back, but then it got more serious, and I told him to back off, but he didn't. I tried to tell Jake, but Marco's his best friend and he started asking all these questions like, 'Well, why were you guys alone in your room?' and 'You guys are always sort of flirting with each other. Of course he'd think you wanted it.' He said he's known Marco for a long time and he knows he'd never do something like that. Cassie took Jake's side. Tobias understands, but he told me I can't leave the Animorphs over it because the fight is too important. And I can't demand that Marco leave because he's such a good strategist, and Jake's best friend besides. So I keep going on missions with them, even though being around Marco terrifies me - even more than the Yeerks. And he keeps flirting with me, and every time he does, it throws me off-guard because it reminds me of what happened."

On the other hand, this scene depicts as black-and-white an attempted rape as you can possibly get. Rachel is walking down the street. The attempted rapist - a stranger who is bigger and stronger than her - is driving. He pulls his car over and gets out. When she runs away, he runs after her. The whole thing is set up so that there could be no possible doubt or misunderstanding: this is a bad man who is trying to rape an innocent girl. Rachel's first reaction is to run away, avoiding using her powers to scare him off until she has no other choice. And yet, somehow it's still Rachel's fault. 12-year-old me, meet rape culture.

Moving on. The kids agree that using Melissa to get to her father isn't going to work. Rachel is tremendously relieved, and suggests morphing something small to sneak into Chapman's house and spy on him. They're all grossed out by the idea of morphing bugs, because they may be humanity's last hope, but they're still kids. Rachel's eyes wander to a picture of her and Melissa at Melissa's birthday party a few years back. In the picture, they are playing with the present Melissa's dad gave her: a kitten.

And so the Animorphs find themselves lurking creepily outside Chapman's house at night. Through a stroke of luck, the cat - Fluffer McKitty - happens to already be outside, and Tobias finds him by Rachel's description. And Marco acts like an asshole to Tobias again.

[There are rats everywhere,] Tobias said. [Rats and mice and all kinds of plump, juicy...] He fell silent, embarrassed.

"Get a grip, Tobias," Marco said. "Don't start eating rats, all right? I don't know if I can have someone who eats rats for a friend."

Sometimes Marco is funny. Sometimes he goes too far. This was one of those times. "Shut up, Marco," I growled.

"I ate a live spider," Jake pointed out. "Does that mean you and I can't be friends?" From his tone of voice I could tell he was angry, too.

None of us knew what Tobias was going through.

None of us had ever been in morph for more than two hours. Tobias had been a hawk for more than a week.

Marco realized he'd been a jerk. "Well, yeah, I guess you're right," he muttered. "Besides, I've been known to eat eggplant. So I guess I can't criticize."

That was an apology, or as close as Marco could get to an actual apology.

Hey, he's growing! Sort of. Anyway, Rachel and Cassie go find Fluffer McKitty so Rachel can acquire him. Everything goes according to plan. Rachel just scoops up the sweet little kitty and snuggles him and acquires his DNA, and enters Chapman's house disguised as a cat. Just kidding! This is Animorphs, so attempting to touch a housecat becomes an hours-long ordeal resulting in injury and emotional trauma. Fluffer is a tomcat in full-on prowler mode. When Rachel tries to pet him, he hisses, scratches her, and runs up a tree. So Rachel asks Tobias to find her a mouse to morph, so she can act as bait to lure him down. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.

Tobias brings her a shrew instead of a mouse, and Marco makes a sexist joke and seriously, fuck him. Fuck this guy. He doesn't want to be an Animorph? Give him what he wants. Anyway. Rachel morphs the shrew and its prey instinct is so strong, she freaks out and starts running all over the yard. She smells a dead body with maggots and her shrew mind is overwhelmed by the desire to eat it. Finally, Tobias scoops her up in his talons, reminds her of school to help her regain control over the shrew's instincts, and sets her gently back down on the grass near the rest of the group.

Fluffer leaps at Rachel, and Jake, Cassie, and Marco all have to work together to grab him and cram him in the cat carrier they brought. All of them end up with scratches. I can speak from personal experience that this is very realistic. Rachel morphs back into human form, completely disgusted and swearing never to morph a shrew again. Fluffer has already fallen asleep in the cat carrier. I can speak from personal experience that this is not realistic at all. Maybe if like fifteen minutes had gone by, but that would have to be fifteen minutes of near-endless yowling. Anyway, Rachel acquires Fluffer, who even purrs as she does it. Exhausted and bleeding, the kids decide to go home and do the actual spying another night.

That night, Rachel has her first-ever PTSD nightmare. They grow up so fast. Her sister Jordan hears her screaming and shakes her awake, and Rachel runs to the bathroom to vomit. Jordan is concerned, but Rachel lies and says she can't remember what the nightmare was about.

She looked at me solemnly. "I know I'm just your little sister by two years, but you would tell me if something bad was happening to you, right? I mean, I wouldn't tell Mom or anyone. You could trust me."

I smiled and drew her into a hug. "I know I can trust you. If anything bad was going on, I'd tell you." It was a lie, of course, and the lie made me feel even worse. I trusted Jordan. I knew in my heart that she was not a Controller.

Of course, that's just what Jake had said about Tom.

I hugged my sister a little closer. I hated the way suspicion had crept into every part of my mind. I hated the way I wasn't sure, not really, totally sure, that I could trust her.

Three nights later, they're back at Chapman's house. Rachel morphs Fluffer and enters the house through the kitty door. Immediately, she notices the Chapmans' odd behavior. Assistant Principal Chapman is sitting in the living room doing nothing. "No TV. No music. He wasn't reading a book or a newspaper. Just sitting." His wife is in the kitchen, chopping vegetables without listening to the radio or humming or talking to herself. Basically, they aren't acting like humans act.

I thought I remembered the series emphasizing that the Yeerk mimics its host so perfectly, you'd never know who was a Controller and who wasn't. But the Yeerks we've seen so far seem to do a pretty poor job of hiding their identity. Tom suddenly stops caring about basketball; the Chapmans suddenly stop caring about their daughter. People around them notice the change. They probably don't jump straight to, "there must be an alien in his head," but they notice. Maybe I misremembered.

"Chapman" walks down to the basement, and Rachel follows him down there. Turns out he's got a secret, locked door in the basement, and behind that is another door - "like the door to a bank vault" - with a high-tech fingerprint-reading thingy. Soon enough, a hologram of Visser Three pops on. This was before we found out that there were sub-Vissers. I know Chapman's Yeerk is pretty powerful, but it still seems kind of weird that he's reporting directly to the guy in charge of the entire Earth invasion. Visser Three really needs to delegate.

Anyway, "Chapman" introduces himself as "Innis 226 of the Sulp Niaar pool" and says what one assumes to be the Yeerk equivalent of "as-salamu alaykum": "May the Kandrona shine and strengthen you." So we get a few, intriguing glimpses of Yeerk culture here. Visser Three yells at Innis for not finding the Andalite bandits yet. (It's been, like, two weeks.) Then he notices the cat and tells Innis to kill it because it might be an Andalite. Innis argues that killing the cat might blow his cover. Visser Three briefly seems to consider eating him, but grudgingly agrees. Then he morphs into some kind of monster that can suck Yeerks out of their hosts heads and threatens to do that to Innis if he doesn't get him the Andalite bandits.

Back up the stairs, a visibly shaken Innis talks quietly with the unnamed Yeerk infesting Mrs. Chapman. They reveal that they hate Visser Three and think he's doing a horrible job of running the invasion, but they can't do anything or he'll eat them. See, this is where middle management comes in handy. I'm imagining a sub-Visser showing up on the hologram and being like, "Yeeaah, so the bosses really want those Andalite bandits? They've reeaally been breathing down my neck about it? You know how it is. So if you could just catch the bandits, that'd be greeaat. I know you can do it - you're a real team player. We'll show Visser Three that you're sub-Visser material. Also, just a reminder: we're putting covers on our TPS reports now? So yeah, if you could get on that..."

Melissa interrupts her parents to ask for some help with her math homework and they blow her off. She goes back up to her room and collapses on her bed in tears. Tobias warns Rachel that the real Fluffer is heading home and she should get out of there soon, but Rachel feels awful for Melissa, so she jumps up on the bed and cuddles with her, purring to try to make her feel better. Tobias warns her that Jake's going nuts, wanting her to get out of that house, but Rachel stays until Melissa falls asleep.

And in this scene, Rachel finds her long-term motivation to fight the Yeerks:

Next time Marco asked why we were fighting the Yeerks, I knew I would have a whole new answer. Because they destroy the love of parents for their daughter. Because they made Melissa Chapman cry in her bed with no one to comfort her but a cat.

It was a small answer, I guess. I mean, it wasn't some high-sounding answer about the entire human race. It was just about this one girl. My friend. Whose heart was broken because her parents were no longer really her parents.

Rachel's very protective of her friends. It probably comes from being the oldest child. Regardless, she's protective of Tobias, she's protective of Melissa, and now we see that her main motivation for being in this fight is her friends. She's in it for them.

So Rachel gets back outside and demorphs, and her friends are kind of pissed at her (again), but she doesn't care, and she tells them most of what happened (again), leaving out the part where Visser Three suspected her of being an Andalite and told Chapman to kill her.

At their next meeting, Rachel announces that she wants to go back in as Fluffer and do some more spying. And the other Animorphs are sort of okay with this because she never told them about the whole death threat thing. Tobias knows Rachel's real motivation is to help Melissa, and he tells her so privately. He sends her all kinds of private thought-speak messages in this book, and it's very, very cute.

When the kids show up again at Chapman's house that night (I think), Jake is missing - supposedly grounded for something. Hmm. Rachel morphs back into Fluffer, and Cassie pets her on the back while smiling mysteriously. Hmmm... Rachel follows Chapman down to the secret basement room again, and almost immediately Jake reveals that he is a flea on her back. Clever! He can't see or hear and basically has no idea what's going on except that Rachel is warm and full of delicious blood, but he can theoretically be of help if something bad happens.

Which it does. Obviously.

Rachel hides under Chapman's desk, but he kicks her, revealing her position. This confirms that the cat is an Andalite, and Visser Three orders Innis to take Rachel to "the nearest landing site," where he will interrogate her. The nearest landing site is apparently the abandoned construction site - the same one that's across a busy highway from the mall and the Y. I wouldn't think that was the best place to land spaceships on a regular basis, but I guess that's why I'm not a Visser.

Anyway, he traps Rachel in a cage and then Visser Three tells him to also bring Melissa so she can be infested. That's when Chapman - the real Chapman - starts fighting back against Innis 226. There's a lot of twitching and jerking and flopping around on the floor, but eventually Innis regains control of his host. However, the rebellion has convinced him that maybe it wouldn't be such a hot idea to piss off his host by infesting his daughter. He carries Rachel to the car, completely ignoring Melissa, who's freaking out about where he's taking her cat. Thankfully, Tobias chases the real Fluffer into Melissa's arms. Innis makes up some story about a stray cat getting into the house, and all is well except that Rachel's in a cage on her way to Visser Three and Melissa is once again emotionally destroyed by her parents' coldness toward her.

They get to the construction site, and a bunch of Bug fighters and Visser Three's Blade ship all land, and Rachel is prepared to die rather than give up her friends. Chapman wants to speak directly to Visser Three, so Innis lets him take over for a few moments. He instantly falls on the ground, having not used his own muscles for so long. Once he remembers how to talk, he reveals that he agreed to become a host only on the condition that Melissa be left alone. He threatens to fight as hard as he can if the Yeerks infest his daughter. Innis takes control again and tells Visser Three that he's telling the truth. Visser Three agrees to leave it be for now, happily distracted by his shiny new Andalite.

He takes Rachel and Jake aboard the Blade ship. But what's that? Marco and Cassie have started an earthmover, and they're plowing the ship! For some reason, this throws Visser Three and all his Hork-Bajir and Taxxon guards into total disarray. Jake takes advantage of the chaos to hop out of the cage, demorph, and morph into a tiger. Rachel demorphs just enough to give her the manual dexterity necessary to open her cage, then morphs back into Fluffer and runs as fast as she can.

But Visser Three has turned into yet another one of his horrible monster morphs - some kind of stone golem thing - and is chasing Rachel across the construction site. He picks Rachel up and is about to kill her, when Tobias swoops in and carrier her to safety in his talons. There's a loud BOOM: the earthmover crashed into a Bug fighter, making it explode for some reason. I'm suddenly reminded of that scene in Last Action Hero where Arnold Schwartzenegger shoots at a car and is amazed when it doesn't blow up. Because in action movies, all you have to do is nudge a vehicle and it instantly erupts in flames. Anyway, Rachel demorphs in a nearby tree, and watches the chaos from there. Tobias assures her that everyone got out okay. Presumably, the newspaper prints another article about teenagers setting off fireworks. Those damn teenagers. Every single week with those fireworks.

There's a one-chapter denouement just like in the last book, because now that the climactic battle's over with, who the hell cares what happens next? In the locker room just before their next gymnastics class, we see that Rachel has slipped a computer-printed note into Melissa's locker that says, "Melissa, your father loves you more than you will ever know. And more than he will ever show you. Signed, someone who knows."

Somehow, this makes her feel better. If I were Melissa, I'd be wondering:
1. Then why doesn't he show it?
2. But my mom doesn't love me?
3. Who in my gymnastics class knows this, and how?
4. Why should I believe them?

Whatever. It's a happy ending, sort of. The important thing is, there were kitties. And in the end, isn't that all that really matters?

Commentary:
In terms of quality, this book was much more consistent than the first. The dialogue is more relaxed, Rachel and Tobias's interactions are more subtle and realistic, and Jake expresses personality traits other than befuddlement. He actually seems like a pretty fun guy to be around! Marco continues his pattern of acting like an asshole (especially to Tobias) in the first half of the book before becoming more likeable in the second. You can almost hear K.A. realizing, "Okay, he's sarcastic, but I'm going too far, let's scale it back a little."

Even though this book doesn't really contribute to the arc of the series, I feel like tonally, it's a good choice for a second book. In the first book, K.A. introduced a lot: five main characters, four alien species, a secret alien invasion, the major villain, two human-Controllers that the main characters know personally, everything about morphing (the technology, how it feels, basic ground rules), and it all culminated in a battle at the Yeerk pool. It's a good idea to take a breather and consider what this massive invasion means for regular, everyday people on a day-to-day basis. I also like that the theme of this book is subtly mirrored in two different stories. Melissa's parents gave up their freedom for her, but can never tell her the truth, and meanwhile she thinks they don't love her. Rachel spends virtually all her free time fighting the Yeerks, but can never tell her family the truth, and meanwhile the silence opens up a rift between her and her little sister.

Melissa's story really breaks my heart. I really wish we'd seen more of her later on in the series. It would have been awesome if Melissa had caught Rachel morphing and confronted her, and found out what was really going on. Then, because in my headcanon the Animorphs took the blue box and hid it (because seriously, what else could have happened to it that would make sense), they'd give her morphing powers that she could use to spy on her dad and secretly relay information to Rachel every week at gymnastics class. She wouldn't be a full Animorph - going on missions would be way too risky with such a high-ranking Controller in her house - but she's in a perfect position to spy, and she could feel like she's doing something productive to help her parents.

...

There's a lot going on in my headcanon.

Anyway, since this is Rachel's first book, it might be a good time to talk about Rachel and Cassie and femininity and why the hell they're best friends when they apparently have nothing in common. There are two main female characters in this series, and each conforms to, and deviates from, traditional gender roles in different ways. Rachel conforms to female gender roles in her outward appearance: by being beautiful and loving fashion. But she deviates from it in her personality, which is bold, brash, and confrontational. Rachel was part of a trend in mid-'90s entertainment of butt-kicking women who nonetheless looked like models. Primary examples include Xena, to whom Rachel will frequently be compared, Sailor Moon, and Buffy. The Spice Girls popularized the term "girl power," which came to refer to a type of feminist empowerment that did not require you to stop wearing makeup or pretty clothes, and that kind of sums up the spirit of the time.

This all came out of third-wave feminism and its emphasis on personal choice: if a woman wanted to look and act in a stereotypically feminine way, that choice was just as legitimate as acting in a stereotypically masculine way, and her lipstick did not "hurt the movement." Third-wave feminism also suggested that the way second-wave feminists looked down on stereotypically feminine activities such as clothes-shopping, cooking, caring for children, and putting on makeup might actually stem from internalized sexism. (After all, is it really all that enlightened to value masculine activities while devaluing feminine activities?) It was a radical and subversive idea: that a woman who loved shopping and looked like a supermodel could also be the best fighter around.

It felt pretty liberating at the time: you can be anything you want! You can be a badass fighter and a girly-girl! Unfortunately, the freedom to be anything quickly devolved into an obligation to be everything. Much like how women are now expected to have a high-powered career and a perfect family (Rachel's mom knows what I'm talking about!), every female character now has to be a supermodel and a genius and a hyper-competent fighter, even if, realistically, ain't nobody got time for that. You can't put a tomboyish fighter in your action-oriented fiction, because that would suggest that fighting is inherently masculine and if a woman is good at fighting, she must be masculine in other ways too. And you can't have a female character who isn't a badass, because then people will complain that there were no Strong Female Characters. So every female character ends up having to be absolutely everything at once.

Which brings me to Rachel. She definitely feels the pressure to put on a brave face. Maybe her mom taught her that. Does she also feel pressure to conform to traditional gender roles? She downplays this in her narration, saying that her good looks are just genetic luck and she just likes nice clothes. But a woman's good looks are more than just her natural appearance: much of what our culture considers beautiful in a woman is just... paint. Even if Rachel has a perfectly symmetrical face, it's unlikely that she happens to also have perfect complexion (as she's going through puberty, no less!) and hair that naturally falls perfectly into place and eyebrows that never need to be plucked or shaped. Looking beautiful takes work. A natural beauty might look plain without makeup; a girl with average features might look stunning with it. Very few women are effortlessly stunning in the way people describe Rachel.

It also seems too coincidental that Rachel just happened to stumble into the most socially-acceptable outlets for her gender-deviant aggressive streak (gymnastics, the most feminine sport this side of figure skating, and shopping). I think that, regardless of what she says in her narration, she cares a lot about how she appears to other people. And she probably isn't immune to social pressure.

Cassie is the opposite of this: she maintains a casual, tomboyish appearance, but on the inside acts much like women are expected to act: kind, nurturing, largely nonviolent. In this way, K.A. presents two different ways of being female, and neither is implied to be better or worse than the other. But it does create a problem: how did two girls who are so different get to be best friends? Even Rachel admits in this book that it looks weird, but she doesn't provide any explanation.

This is where I remind myself that the Animorphs are in middle school. Very few girls are into fashion when they're in elementary school. It's the kind of thing that starts... well, around Rachel's age. When you remember that these kids are at an age when their identities are in flux, you can see more clearly why Rachel and Cassie are best friends even though they seem to have little in common. Rachel probably just started to care about fashion, like, last year. And her friends consider it an integral part of her personality because when you're that age, it doesn't feel to you like you're trying on a million new identities a year. You feel like each new identity you settle on is who you really are. At least, that's how I felt.

I remember feeling like, during the summer between 5th and 6th grade, someone sent out a memo to every girl but me, and the memo said: "Fashion and music are now the most important things in the world. Put down your American Girl doll; here's a free one-year subscription to YM. Here is what's fashionable this season, and where to buy it, and how to wear it. Here is how you apply makeup. Here is how to make your hair not-frizzy. This is the cool radio station to listen to; memorize this list of popular boy bands and their members, and pick a favorite member - and choose carefully because your choice will reveal your truest self." It was very disorienting, showing up at a new school and feeling like even the kids I'd known last year were suddenly completely different. Clothing I'd worn four months before without comment now attracted unimaginably vicious ridicule. I raced to catch up, buying a whole new wardrobe from Limited Too and tearing through my older sister's copies of Seventeen with the sole purpose of getting the popular girls to leave me alone for five goddamn minutes. All of 6th grade was just one big WTF tornado.

I wonder if Rachel was more of a tomboy back in elementary school, and if she became more traditionally feminine in order to gain power when she found herself in a social structure (middle school) where gender roles are everything. This may be my own personal bias talking, since I don't really get the innate appeal of shopping and makeup. But it could explain why Rachel and Cassie are best friends, despite their apparent differences: they became best friends when they had more in common, and now Rachel's just going through a phase.

Where do the Animorphs live?
This book doesn't provide too many clues.
1. Rachel mentions pine trees a couple of times. There are different species of pine all over the place, so that establishes nothing.
2. We do, however, find out what birds the kids have started using as flight morphs. Presumably, they acquired them from injured animals at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, meaning they're native to the area.
2a. Tobias morphs a red-tailed hawk, of course, which lives year-round everywhere the kids could possibly live except the coast of Maine. And even Maine sees red-tails in the summer.
2b. Rachel morphs a bald eagle - not the smartest morph for avoiding detection, but she's Rachel and she wants to look awesome - which has a much spottier range.
2c. Jake morphs a peregrine falcon, whose range is spottier still, although at least his bird is more common and less noticeable.
2d. Cassie and Marco morph the same osprey, whose migratory range, at least, covers almost the entire country.

The only place you'll see all of these birds at the same time is the Pacific Northwest coast. Both places I listed as possibilities in my last post - Tampa Bay, Florida and Williamsburg, Virginia - see bald eagles and peregrine falcons at different times of year. So it's highly unlikely that the WRC would have both birds at the same time, unless it was located in the Pacific Northwest. Or The Gardens could have a hawk exhibit, and the bald eagle and peregrine falcon could have been acquired there.

Come back next Monday for the weirdest love triangle ever when I review Animorphs #3: The Encounter! Until then, may the Kandrona shine and strengthen you.